We all have it in our stash, and it’s okay to admit it – you’ve got scrapbooking paper that you’re nervous to use. You know the paper I’m talking about – paper that’s too pretty to cut into, or has a huge or heavily repeated pattern that you’re afraid of covering up. The kind of paper that can baffle your scrapbooking mind.
That paper.
I will freely admit that I have a lot of that paper in my stash. Some of it’s new, some of it’s old (but I still love it), but it all has one thing in common: it needs to be used! It’ll at least be seen if I use it in an album. It’s not doing anyone any good sitting in a Cropper Hopper on my shelf.
As it turns out, there are lots of ways to use that paper, and I’m going to share several of them with you right now!
1. Cut It Out
This option may be the most natural one for traditional scrapbookers since we’re all so used to pulling out scissors, trimmers, and craft knives anyway. There are many different ways to use creative cutting in your scrapbooking, and the technique that you choose will largely depend on the type of design that’s printed on your scrapbooking paper.
One of my favorite techniques for creative cutting is to use a craft knife to carefully cut along the edge of a design (without completely detaching it from the paper), allowing photos, embellishments, or other pieces of paper to be tucked under the cutout. Large designs that are located for the most part on the edge of a sheet of paper work best with this technique, and I’ve included a few examples of this type of pattern below (from left to right: Glitz Dance in Sunshine “Polka“, Pink Paislee Nantucket “Lobster Bisque“, My Mind’s Eye Lost and Found Christmas “Noel“).
Can you see the opportunities for creative cutting here? The flowers on the Glitz paper are perfect for trimming with a craft knife and then layering over photos, as are the fish (or even portions of the coral) on the Pink Paislee sheet, and the ornaments, “Noel,” and Santa’s sleigh on the My Mind’s Eye print are all prime candidates for a bit of cutting. Continue Reading →
